“Patrick Ewing” by Salvatore Pane

I
am ten years old, and when I watch Patrick Ewing on television, I see
my father. I know this shouldn’t make sense. Patrick Ewing is an African
American millionaire who dunks basketballs for my beloved New York
Knickerbockers, and my father is an Italian mechanic in Scranton,
Pennsylvania, a bankrupt city sinking into abandoned mines. But there
are similarities between the two only I can see. Their height. Their no
nonsense attitudes. On the court, Patrick Ewing is not a finesse player.
A tornado of elbows, he swats away opposing players or barrels straight
into them, daring them to take the charge. He doesn’t make fade away
jumpers. He works too hard for that and relies on brute force alone to
get to the rim. That’s my father. Fingernails black from grease.
Hands hard from machinery. I go to his garage every day after school and
Saturdays too. I pull weeds and dig meaningless holes in the back. I
don’t ask questions about the dwindling number of customers, the hours a
day my dad spends in front of the frame rack gritting his teeth,
waiting for something too terrible for language. Patrick Ewing and my
father, they both know the importance of work, the self-satisfaction of a
job well done even if there are no rewards. These are my role models
for what it means to be a good person.

In 1994, the Knicks lose in the Finals to Hakeem the Dream Olajuwon. I
change Catholic schools that fall and show up the first day wearing
Blacktops, Ewing’s brand of sneakers. Flimsy and white, so unlike the
Air Jordans the other kids wear, expensive, elegant, sneakers that smell
like the not too distant future. My new classmates make fun of me and
gush about their hero, the ultimate finesse player: MJ, MJ, MJ! My
reaction is to join the basketball team, to prove to them on the court
that toughness and hard work always win out over god given ability,
isolation jumpers, and an athlete who agreed to star in Space Jam.

My father coaches the team and we go 0-50. I score five total points
in five total years. After a 60 point shellacking by those snub-nosed
Richie Riches at Our Lady of Peace, my father takes me to a park I’ve
never seen before, a park far away from our Scrantonian home. He parks
his truck and passes me the worn practice ball. It’s just the two of us,
and the combination of orange twilight and cracked asphalt remind me of
apocalypse. The ground beneath our feet is hollow for miles.

“We’re not leaving till you make five free throws in a row,” my dad says.

Even at ten, I get it. He thinks I’m going to make the shots quickly.
He thinks I’ll make five free throws in a row and be reborn confident
and new, my anemic offense rebooted in a single stroke of coaching
genius. But then I remember Patrick Ewing, the doom of his body, how he
never pulls up for a jumper, how he always runs headfirst into his
trembling opponents. I remember all those missed game winners, the gimme
free throws in the final ticking seconds, the baseball sized pads on
his knees signifying years of pain, how season after season he failed to
squeak past Jordan in the playoffs despite promising the Knickerbocker
faithful a championship, a ring he will never deliver, missing jewelry
that will force him to become a coach in his forties in some misguided
attempt at redemption. I remember Patrick Ewing and I miss shot after
shot after shot. Darkness comes and we can barely see, my father
squinting beneath the basket, me at the foul line junking up brick after
brick. We’re waiting for one of us to break, and I’m grinning like a
lunatic, and I want to hurl the ball at his face just as much as I want
to drop to my knees and thank him, because I know this playground is
where I’m being formed, that he is showing me to outwork everyone no
matter what even if there’s no chance at success or power or reward.

Five hours later, we return to my dad’s truck, but he doesn’t drive
us home. He steers into Scranton and idles in front of his garage.
There’s a demented pride in his eyes, and he cups his hand around my
neck, draws me close to his warm body. Whenever his friends stop by,
they ask me “Are you going to follow in your father’s footsteps?” and I
say “Sure. Maybe. I don’t know,” because what else am I supposed to say?
My dad lowers the volume of the radio, perennially tuned to ESPN, to
the fading careers of Ewing and all my other heroes. Dad looks me in the
eye and speaks for the first time in over an hour.

“You’re not going to be me,” he says slowly, enunciating each new word. “I won’t allow it.”

Comments

Beautiful and powerful. I remember something Lawrence wrote. “Give
homage and allegiance to a hero and you yourself become heroic. It is
the law of men.” There is no certain connection between success and hero
which is one reason I suspect why William James called “success the
bitch goddess.” The father, as presented, is neither a success nor a
celebrity, but very much a hero. It is a telling paradox which
Chesterton defines as “the way truth has of standing on its head to call
attention to itself.”Great story!